Task-Based III: Expanding the Range of Activities through the Web


This wiki has been created to provide language instructors with the opportunity to share activities, ideas, and thoughts related to implementation of task-based activities into their language teaching process. TBIII, a publication of the International Association for Language Learning Technology (www.iallt.org) publishing next month (May 09), presents a wide range of classroom-tested task-based activities. Ranging from individual activities to course-length tasks and spanning languages and levels of instruction, TBIII provides a variety of task models, among which any instructor can find ideas for their own practice.

Join us here in sharing your task-based lesson ideas, whether origianl or variations on the themes presetned in TBIII.

Dr. LeeAnn Stone
Carol Wilson-Duffy
Editors, TBIII



Lynn- 400 Students, 50 instructors- ideas for Ts that they can use without a lot of time investment on their part.

Cindy: Was familiar with task-based I and wanted to see the evolution of the process. Very interested in mobile devices and interested in second life.

Joy: (Hawaii) Our school is task-based. We don't have a text, but we have created a lot of tasks and I am looking for more. Everything in our school is blocked.

Alex: (Univ of Michigan) came because I heard you (LeeAnn) were good.

Task-based Teaching and Learning:
  • Something that has real world function
  • creative (participants)
  • pair
  • tangible outcomes
  • rubrics work well with tasks
  • listening about the weather online and sharing what they understood with a teacher would be listening comprehension. Using that info in order to determine what to pack or what activities to do would represent better a task (using info to do something real-world)


Theres-- Survey Monkey/GoogleDocs-- have students write a survey that they have other students take.


Group I (Jeanette, Alex, Lynn): Ideas... Museum visits, life of artists via Google Earth,




Group II (Joy, Cindy): Theme-based curriculum with newspaper end product enhanced with tech. tools

LeeAnn: Sightseeing slideshows via Google Earth,
What do you need to know to help instructors implement?
  • How to post a note
  • That's it!

Theresa Minick - Regents Foreign Language Academy

Powerpoint available at ___
Link to EyeFi: http://www.eye.fi
ClustrMaps: http://www.clustrmaps.com/
Bubbleshare: http://www.bubbleshare.com/

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Doug Canfield - University of Tennessee
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Second Life Website: http://www.secondlife.com
Direct link to new account sign-up: https://join.secondlife.com/
SLURL to VolNation: http://tinyurl.com/ynvjgr

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.Voki ideas:
museum docent tours-- each character provides details of specific details
Voki has 2 minute limit, but can use other apps (Audacity, etc.) to record longer lengths
personal ads -- the avatar creates a distance between selves and characteristics of the avatars to allow for an eHarmony type situation
commercial-- sell something
newscast- who would be best weatherperson, sportscaster, etc.
job applicant selling themselves-- with employer to hire
TV show- create voki "actresses" and "actors" to vie for postitions on TV shows.

Doug on Second Life
Theory underlying SecondLife-- socio-cultural theory. If you need to justify to faculty or administrators-- anything that Scott Thirne has written.
Doug-- role playing
Lisa- experiential (which Doug will extrapolate to phenomenological)
Doug will provide a sense of what you can do & then participants will brainstorm additional ideas.
clip: "Educational Uses of Second Life"

Twinity- a set of virtual replicas of cities. Not off the ground yet. A way to orient studnet to ciies where they may be going for ed abroad for example.

Why are the 3 presenters in SecondLife vs another VR situation? Critical mass. 1/3 Americans 1/3 European balance spread out. More non-Englih than English folks in Second Life.

UTK- wanted to get this into the hands of beginning languge studnets. Role play was lowest cost (time/4) to do this.

xstreetsl.com-- "marketplace" for SL; lots of freebies

Doug's example-- home decoration
some studnets as owners; others as decorators
Dealing with various rooms, texture, size shape, color, furniture, etc.
First walkthrough-- customer talking, designer asking questions.
Negotiation between students regardng vision fo rthe decor.

Students realy got into this. May have been given a role (rather than self-select), but they took these on as their own.

"Owning" vs "covering" the language

UTK entered SL to be able to do role plays that 1) don't currently have time for (3 hours vs 5 previously); 2) studnets don't feel they're in Cancun or wherever in the classroom

Order food at cafes, buy clothes, etc.
The kind sof things we are saying about SL now are the same we were saying about the internet 15 years ago (Doug).

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